Special Collections Digital Projects

The online Augustana Observer, Augustana's student newspaper, covers the years 1902-through the previous academic year and is an invaluable resource on the history of Augustana College. Published paper issues of the current academic year to date are available in Special Collections.

Images and transcriptions from the diaries kept by two Illinois soldiers, Gould D. Molineaux and Basil Messler, during the Civil War. Both served in the Union Army in the Missouri area, and Molineaux was active in the siege of Vicksburg.

Augustana's campus has gone through many changes since the college moved to Rock Island in 1875. This project documents the history of the buildings on Augustana's campus, as well as the ways the campus has changed in size and shape, from its beginning until the present.

Interviews with Western Illinois pioneers taken in the early 20th century by John Hauberg, an amateur local historian. Especially curious about the first settlers of Quad Cities area, Hauberg interviewed many of the members of the Old Settler's Association. Hauberg's papers, held in Special Collections, contain over 350 pioneer interviews, a fraction of which are represented here.

This website was constructed based on research done by a history seminar in the Fall of 2000. Students in the seminar, conducted by Professor Thomas F. Mayer, worked directly with a seventeenth-century manuscript which Special Collections had recently purchased. The manuscript contains the correspondence of Reginald Pole (1500-1558) during the first part of his two diplomatic missions from the Pope, first for the reconciliation of England to the Catholic Church, and second for peace between France and the Empire. Students produced research papers in the class, and these papers, as well as images from the codex, are found on this website.